FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT FRENCH COLONY - PAGE 2

Seven French Trappist monks were abducted from a mountain monastery Wednesday in northern Algeria, apparently by Islamic insurgents. The French government condemned the "odious act" and again urged its citizens to leave the former French colony. The monks were seized before dawn in the town of Tibehirine, about 40 miles south of Algiers, according to French officials. An armed group came to the Notre Dame de l'Atlas monastery seeking a doctor, presumably for a wounded comrade, said Monsignor Pierre Claverie, the bishop of Oran.

OUAGADOUGOU (Reuters) - Two Frenchmen held hostage by al Qaeda in northern Mali since November appeared in a video on Saturday appealing to French President Nicolas Sarkozy to secure their release. The video, received by authorities in Burkina Faso and seen by a Reuters reporter, shows Philippe Verdon and Serge Lazarevic. Both were seized in northern Mali on November 24 in a kidnapping claimed by al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). Looking thin, Verdon, who will be 54 this month, appears with Lazarevic, 48, in a tent and says they are "in the desert in extremely difficult conditions".

MONTREUIL, France (Reuters) - Maiga Cousmane doesn't speak French. He has no money and still no place to live, three months after escaping the chaotic north of Mali, crossing the Algerian border and arriving by boat to France, where he made it to the capital. But the 23-year-old in leather jacket and jeans feels slightly less adrift among his countrymen in the Paris suburb of Montreuil, often called "Little Bamako" and home to the bulk of France's 100,000 Malian immigrants. Here, Malians recently and long-ago emigrated depend on kinship, news-swapping and solidarity as they fret over their far-away country at war while cheering France's military intervention.

By Bate Felix BAMAKO, Jan 17 (Reuters) - French troops surrounded the Malian town of Diabaly on Thursday, keeping Islamists rebels who had seized it three days ago bottled up while a West African military force took shape. The French held back from launching a full-out assault on the town as the Al Qaeda linked rebels had taken refuge in the homes of civilians. "The Islamists are still in Diabaly. They are very many of them. Every time they hear a plane overhead, they run into homes, traumatising the people," said one woman who fled the town with her three children overnight.

PARIS (Reuters) - France will not negotiate with gunmen claiming to be from Nigerian Islamist group Boko Haram who have taken a French family of seven hostage, Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said on Tuesday. The three adults and four children were seized in north Cameroon near the Nigerian border last week. In a video posted online, the gunmen threatened to kill them unless authorities in Nigeria and Cameroon freed Islamist militants held there. The kidnapping brought to 15 the number of French citizens held in central and west Africa and highlighted the danger to French nationals and interests in the region since Paris sent troops to Mali last month to help oust Islamist rebels.

Although they hadn't seen each other in more than 60 years, Lydie Clark and Suzanne Truteau still speak the quintessential sister language: They correct each other's French, goad each other into remembering childhood memories and sing the same nursery rhymes. But ask them about the other's second husband, or Truteau's third, and the details are sparse. Ask them about the other's grandchildren, and no stories come tumbling out. The sisters lost touch more than 40 years ago--a result of living on separate continents, constant moves, name changes and hectic lives.

PARIS (Reuters) - France banned protests on Friday against cartoons published by a satirical weekly denigrating Islam's Prophet Mohammad as part of a security clamp-down while prayers took place across the Muslim world. The country's Muslim population, drawn largely from ex-colonies in North and West Africa, shrugged off the controversy as imams in mosques denounced the pictures but urged their followers to remain calm. The drawings have stoked a furor over an anti-Islam film made in California that has provoked sometimes violent protests in several Muslim countries, including attacks on U.S. and other Western embassies, the killing of the U.S. envoy to Libya and a suicide bombing in Afghanistan.

BAMAKO/GAO, Mali (Reuters) - French forces hunting Islamist rebels in northern Mali parachuted into a strategic town and took control on Friday, but a suicide bombing further south and the killing of two civilians by soldiers in the capital Bamako raised fresh security fears. In their hot pursuit of al Qaeda-allied militants in Mali's remote Saharan northeast, French special forces seized the town and airfield of Tessalit, about 50 km (30 miles) from the Algerian border. It was the northernmost town secured so far by French and Chadian troops in their drive to flush retreating jihadist insurgents out of their hideouts in the Adrar des Ifoghas mountains, where they are believed to hold French hostages.